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How to setup lemp stack in ubuntu 20.04

Last updated : Dec 11, 2021

In this article you will know how to setup lemp stack in Ubuntu (Linux). Nginx is a very well written reverse proxy server. It may not make bigger difference when you are programming in localhost but the moment you are managing application on live server, you will feel Nginx is the better choice.

Note : If you want to setup server in Digital Ocean or in your own physical system in Linux OS, this article can help you.

For web programming in PHP you need a web server to interpret the scripting and see the output. There are many web servers for PHP but Nginx and Apache are two most popular and used servers for web programming.

The advantage of using Apache web server is it has an in built support for PHP whereas in Nginx you need something called PHP-FPM. FPM stands for fast process manager, it enables a service running on your machine which helps Nginx to interpret the PHP script and render the PHP pages.

So we will pick up Nginx server here for PHP pages rendering.

Let's start :

1. update and upgrade your system
For that open up your terminal and type

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

2. Install Nginx server
For that open up your terminal and type

sudo apt install nginx

3. Check whether Nginx is installed or not
Open up your web browser and type localhost in url bar and you will see the following output
nginx_output

4. Now install php and php-fpm for Nginx
There is very good repository for installing latest version of PHP i.e., php-8.0 known as Ondrej/php. So we will add this repo to the system first. Open up terminal again and type

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

After adding repo update the system again and type

sudo apt install php8.0-fpm

5. check whether php installed or not
Type in terminal

php -v

and if you get the php version then PHP is installed correctly, if any error occurs you can comment and tell. After checking PHP installation now verify php-fpm installation, type in terminal

sudo systemctl status php8.0-fpm

and you will get output something like this :
php_fpm_status

6. Till now no PHP page will run in browser
For running PHP pages we have to integrate php-fpm with Nginx. So type in terminal

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

you will see something like this :
sites_enabled_default

after editing some lines, this will be the updated file :

sites_enabled_default_new

7. PHP installation is completed. Now it's time to install Mysql
So type in terminal

sudo apt install mysql-server

After running previous command, now install mysql with command

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Now it will ask you some questions:
1. (Validate password component) press Y for yes, any other key for no : Y
pres Y for this because it is really important to secure mysql database and this component will help you to enhance password security

2. now it will ask you to create a password for root user.
3. remove anonymous users : Y
4. disallow root login remotely : Y
5. remove test database and access to it : Y
6. remove privilege tables now : Y

All done!

8. Till now PHP and Mysql installation is complete and time to install phpmyadmin
So type in terminal

sudo apt install phpmyadmin

It will ask you for selecting server but as we are using Nginx so we will select just press tab key and return key.
sites_enabled_default_new

then it will ask you configure dbconfig_common but select no and continue. Now copy phpmyadmin from /usr/share/ to /var/www/html/

PHPmyadmin installed. You can browse phpmyadmin at http://ip_address/phpmyadmin/index.php

9. But you will not be able to login with root username because we have disallowed that
so we have to create new user. type these commands

sudo mysql -u root -p
enter old password

create user 'new_root'@'localhost' identified by 'newrootroot';

grant all on *.* to 'new_user'@'localhost';

flush privileges;